


In the Crosshairs

by pyrites



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (Make sure the workskin is turned on! I put a lot of work into this one.), :-), Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Gertrude Robinson's A+ Mentoring, Like. Four entire OCs that are super relevant to Many Things., Original Character(s), Pre-Canon, Set on one of Gertrude and Gerry's trips overseas!, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), The Beholding, The Desolation, The Hunt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28491342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrites/pseuds/pyrites
Summary: Trust is a rare thing in this world. If you have this code, that means someone thought you worthy of it. UseScopeto exchange information, find shelter, stay informed, and close in on prey — but know your real targets, or risk becoming one yourself.Scope’sformal removal for breach of duty is more permanent than you’d think.Statement of Atticus Faraday, regarding a safehouse in Alabama.
Relationships: Gerard Keay & Gertrude Robinson, Gerard Keay & Original Character(s)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 32
Collections: GerryTitan verse





	In the Crosshairs

**Author's Note:**

> this is my statement for the [avatar of fear zine](https://avataroffearzine.tumblr.com/post/639155338580525056/)! please go and download it, we had so many incredible pieces submitted and everyone's OCs/sonas are **stunning!**
> 
> for those who really know me, i can say that this statement is directly relevant to my [pharos by right](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1933000) series, even if i wrote this as a bit more canon-compliant for the zine.
> 
>  **CWs in the end notes,** as well as some further context!

_Case #0142410_

[TAPE CLICKS ON]

**FARADAY**

Lucky I trust your boy, or I wouldn’t be lettin’ her walk off with him.

**GERTRUDE**

Your partner is in good hands. I take it you agreeing to stay behind is because you don’t trust _me._ Taking the opportunity to… _scope_ out my intentions, as it were?

**FARADAY**

_[Smiling]_ You don’t trust me, neither. I like the joke, though. _Sure_ you ain’t his mama?

**GERTRUDE**

Quite certain. But you’re right, I don’t trust Hunters. The fact that _Gerard_ trusts one enough to ask for your help just… raises my hackles a little bit.

**FARADAY**

Sounds like you don’t trust me with _him._ Protective?

**GERTRUDE**

_[Dryly]_ Something like that. I’m sure you can understand, given Isla-Mae.

**FARADAY**

Yeah, actually. I respect your caution. So, I’ll say flat out that we’re still playin’ with the same fire here. Keay’ll tell you that good as anyone. If I’m a _hunter_ at all, I’m not one of yours.

**GERTRUDE**

So say them all. _[Deep breath]_ Well, at any rate, I would appreciate if you could just walk me through what this ‘application’ really is. Perhaps how you started using it, and what you really use it for.

**FARADAY**

_[Laughs]_ I mean no disrespect, ma’am, but it might be a generational thing if what you’re so hung up on is the tech.

**GERTRUDE**

Hardly. Though, you _are_ both awfully young to be in this business. How old are you, did you say?

**FARADAY**

Nearly twenty-six. Isla-Mae’s twenty-three since spring. _[Pauses]_ Okay, I didn’t agree to help you tail taxidermy so you could be pullin’ things outta my head.

**GERTRUDE**

There would be no pulling if you’d stop being fresh with me. I’d just like the perspective of someone more embedded in the system. Fresh eyes, if you will.

**FARADAY**

So you _can_ see it in me. _[Sighs]_ Fine. But only ‘cause I know Keay wouldn’t run with you if you weren’t the real deal, and I know for a hard fact how tight the security is. The concept’s not the secret, the codes are.

 _Scope_ is a private networking platform for those who interact with… things that shouldn’t be. Monsters, murderers… bad magic. It operates on a code system that breaks it down into fourteen faults, but I don’t really care to think it’s that simple. It’s the Celsius of parataxonomy.

**GERTRUDE**

Ah, yes. I almost forgot we were in Pittsburgh.

**FARADAY**

Welcome to America.

Ain’t like Keay don’t agree with me, though. That’s part of why we keep contact. He knows better than to try and make a blurred line sharp. Is that why you keep him around, or is it why you don’t trust him?

**GERTRUDE**

Gerard is out fetching coffee with your wife. I’ll form my own opinion on this right here and now. If I’m going to allow this sort of correspondence to impact my work, I’ll need to understand how it functions from the inside.

**FARADAY**

Fair enough. I got a prime example of what happens when you misuse it, if you don’t mind a story.

**GERTRUDE**

We have time. Is telling me a story like this going to put you in danger?

**FARADAY**

Nah. Like I said, only thing that’s secret’s the entry keys, so we don’t need to worry about anyone comin’ after me. Is _recording it_ gonna help you with somethin’ someday?

**GERTRUDE**

It may well. Whenever you’re ready.

**FARADAY (STATEMENT)**

I’d gotten the link from my boss at one of my odd construction jobs in Charleston. I was leaving late one night, last one there ‘sides him, when _something_ crept onto the site and started sniffing around. He didn’t seem near so rattled as he damn well should have been, just dragged me to hide with him behind a waste skip and told me to stay quiet. He tapped out a message into some chat platform — a cluster of symbols I didn’t understand — and we waited until the monster had decided there was nothing of consequence to tear apart. That’s what he said it would’ve done had it found us, that we’d have been viscera in the dry dirt by morning.

I didn’t make a sound. I remember that I just didn’t want it to hear my heart beating. Blood rushing, breathin’ too hard. Some part of me knew that’s the sort of thing it would be able to hear. And if my boss had encountered this thing enough times to know how to evade it, clearly he was doing something right. We stayed behind that waste skip for what felt like hours before I felt its presence just… fade off, in a way that didn’t feel like it was just lyin’ in wait for us to _think_ it had gone.

He gave me the hyperlink and code because I kept my cool. Said it might be useful to me if I was planning to continue traveling, too. If I saw anything else, I could reach out for help locally, or ask questions about what it might be.

That man ruined my life, bringing me into this, but it saved my Isla-Mae. I just don’t think she’ll ever be as thankful for that as I am.

For a while, I just moved through my life the same as I had been. Lived out of my car until I didn’t have one anymore, took the same odd jobs where I could find ‘em. I wasn’t running away from nothin’, except maybe dissatisfaction. I didn’t hate Oklahoma, I just didn’t wanna spend my whole life there. Whatever I was doin’ before hasn’t been important for almost three years.

There wasn’t much rooting me to my life before _Scope_ gave me some structure. Somethin’ to have running in the background, sort of, like… well, I guess like an app on your phone. Always awake, even if you’re not touchin’ it right then. That anxiety you feel about checking it, depending what it is. I never wanted to shut it down completely, even if I could pretend that I was unplugged from that darkness.

You can’t really unplug from it. Once you know, you know. And so you keep going.

For a long time, the goal wasn’t to fight, or kill, or win. Just to follow, at first. To track patterns, understand behavior. Learn what they were after, what they were capable of, where to look out for them and where might be safer. I’d request information for ages before I made offers or asked for assistance, keepin’ my distance from whatever it was until I could watch someone else take it down. Then I would learn from _them,_ so I could do it myself without getting my ass handed back to me.

Thing is, I could feel myself creeping towards something. Not a target, but a place, and not even a place that I could _go._ Felt like a… cat in the brush, just waiting for the right moment. Somethin’ in me knew there would be a moment someday. But I told myself it was fine because I was only keeping an eye out, and telling people what the dark was doin’ until they could get to it. I was being a good neighbor. There was no credit to take.

I was in Texas the first time I felt I could take care of somethin’ myself. You’ve heard of cattle mutilation as a demonic omen, or a sign of extraterrestrial life beaming down just to fuck the world as we know it? That’s not what it is, I don’t think. What I saw was just… _mutated,_ still living with flesh writhing off the bone. I didn’t watch that situation for long ‘fore I took a bolt gun to it.

There was a different sort of satisfaction to that versus tipping someone else off so I could watch. I can’t really pit the two against each other to say which one makes me feel stronger, or safer. They both make me feel like these things can, and will, be taken care of one way or another, and that’s good enough for me. I don’t need to bring strangers in on it anymore, either, now that I’ve got a partner. But I’m getting to that.

I ended up tracking something across a few states around March of 2012 and eventually needed a place to stay the night in Alabama, so I put out feelers on _Scope_ for any safehouses with an open room. Didn’t take long to get a claim in the chat, and a private message with an address from a civilian with the marker for having met the Lonely in their bio.

Most safehouse keepers on _Scope_ provide a dummy location first when they bring someone unfamiliar in. I expected a decoy, and that when I got to wherever it led there’d be some hint somewhere as to how to find the real spot, but it brought me right to this sprawlin’, grassy plot of land, occupied by only one house.

That was what first made me suspicious. But, I didn’t have a car to stay in at the time, so I thought it’d have to do. I was confident enough I could defend myself if anything were to creep up on me, and probably even defend the owner if the threat came from outside. Still, I thought, if they’re runnin’ a safehouse, shouldn’t they have been smarter? Either they were new to this, or experienced enough to be confident, too.

Her name was Willadeene. Looked like any other Southern white woman in her late 30s, with blonde hair curled above her shoulders and a pearl necklace. Clearly had money, if the house was just hers with no family in the picture. It was a big, classic Southern house with a wrap-around balcony and porch, the ceilings painted that traditional haint blue. Beautiful place. Too big for one person, she told me, and so she’d spent all sorts of time converting the rooms so she could offer beds to anybody who needed one. _‘Beatin’ the Lonely back with a broomstick,’_ was the joke she made, and I told her it looked like she was doin’ a fine job.

I didn’t want to be a cynic. Some part of me thought that if I couldn’t believe in kindness for kindness’ sake, then I would be taking another step closer to that _place._

There were a few other people already there. Willadeene told me in the kitchen that none of them were like us, they didn’t know about the world, so don’t tell ‘em. I had no interest in putting random, innocent people in the line of fire, and I was only gonna be there overnight.

I did ask her why she housed folks like me when she could stick to protecting ones who deserve it more. She told me that we all deserve the same treatment. Somethin’ about the slice of sweet potato pie she handed over to me implied she meant the treatment should be kind.

I was sent upstairs to an empty room down a long hallway. Took glancing inventory of the decor on the way — a lot of white and blue, simple paintings, a table with somethin’ glass on it here or there. Mostly, I just wanted to bed down for the night. Stepped out onto the balcony for a smoke, didn’t bother to change my clothes or pull back the covers ‘fore I hit the lights. Laid there for all of two minutes before the baby started crying next door.

I could hear a woman’s voice begging quietly for it to stop, shushin’ and singin’. The floorboards creaked like she was rockin’, but it didn’t seem to help. After a few too many minutes of the struggle, I went over to knock on her door. Again, good neighbor, and all. It’s what you learn to be in a small town, if you don’t just learn to hate everybody you’ve ever known.

At first, she didn’t open it. Just called out to apologize for the noise, say she’s got it under control. Baby screamed again, and she got frantic under her breath, so I told her my name through the door and asked if she needed a hand. She went quiet, the baby kept crying. So I kept talkin’ to her. Told her I grew up with a lot of baby cousins, my little sister’s a good margin younger than me, and I still remember bein’ taught how to hold her. Some things stick with you.

That point, I wanted to calm her just as much as the baby. Not even just so I could get to sleep, but because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d just stood and talked to somebody outside of pickin’ up my pay after a job, or renting a room somewhere. Business, or silence. I wanted her to open the door and talk back to me, for just a minute. I didn’t expect the relief I felt when she finally did.

It should have told me something about her, how easily she placed her baby into my arms. Desperation made her too trusting. I was still trying not to be a cynic, so I think I just wanted to believe I wasn’t threatening. I was trying real hard not to be.

It was after I got the baby to take a bottle that she told me her name was Isla-Mae. I sat in the armchair with him while she finally took a moment to brush her hair, talkin’ to me through our reflections in the vanity mirror. She was so tired I could see it, but she never stopped smilin’ at me.

Her hair was so long when we first met. Color of dried blood, I remember thinking, and that was the first time I really startled myself with the way my mind had started working. Thinkin’ bloody thoughts about someone so _pleasant,_ baby hardly a year old in my arms… It just hit me right in the gut that I was already on my way out of whatever place _they_ were still in, and I didn’t know exactly when I’d crossed over that line.

Sounds stupid sayin’ it now, I get it. I just didn’t think she should be bloody.

Willadeene came knockin’, saying she heard the baby cry. Suggested we bring him downstairs to sit around the fireplace so she could make us some hot toddy. Y’all ever put whiskey in your tea? Isla-Mae really needed it that night, that’s for damn sure. Watching her unwind was worth being awake. I paced around with Jackson so she could finish her mug, bouncin’ in circles. He didn’t like it when I stopped moving.

I passed him to Willadeene when she offered to let me sit, but he started wailing so hard I had to take him back. She laughed it off, figured he must just not like her perfume, and refilled our mugs one more time before she went up to bed.

Isla-Mae and I ended up talkin’ on the porch all night, passin’ the baby back and forth while he slept. She didn’t want to admit her relief that somebody else was handling Jackson, but it wasn’t too secret. He was collicky and she was only twenty-one. She’d left his daddy back in Louisiana, and couldn’t go running back to her family after running _from_ them to be with him in the first place. She fiddled with her cross while she told it all and I tried to understand.

I was only stayin’ the one night, I should have gotten some sleep myself, but it would’ve felt wrong to leave them. It was an offhand comment, but she said something about how I was the first man she’d met in a long time that she could just sit around with and feel safe. It messed me up, hearin’ that. She’d only known me a few hours, and she said it with this crooked sort of laugh.

Big part of me wanted to find whatever sons of bitches made her feel any different, same way I find monsters to watch and wait for. Better part of me just wanted to finish out the rest of the night remembering why everybody in my hometown used to tell my mama they were sure I’d grow up to take over the daycare center someday. So, that’s what I did. I held her son so she could breathe, and that was that.

Eventually we went back upstairs and split up. Jackson slept through ‘til morning. Think that was the last night Isla-Mae ever did the same.

While everyone ate breakfast together at the big, long table in the dining room, the other two guests at the house said their goodbyes and left with a tin of tea cakes each. Place felt more like a bed and breakfast than a safehouse when I was the only one there off of _Scope,_ and Isla-Mae was the only one who had been there for upwards of three weeks, prayin’ never to be found.

Willadeene suggested I stay another night. I thought about the thing I was trackin’, and figured my eyes were useless if I couldn’t keep ‘em open. But Isla-Mae was still good conversation during daylight, and playing with Jackson was a nice reprieve from… everything. It was the first time in months that I realized how swept up I’d let myself get. And for what? Things I never planned to finish myself? All seemed a waste, suddenly.

I still got back on the road the next day, and fell asleep on the bus. I was three damn cities away when I realized I’d left my phone behind. If it had just been my knife or somethin’, I could have just gotten another that worked just as good, but I couldn’t replace that information or those connections. I needed it, so I turned back. It was twilight by the time I got to the house.

Climbing the porch steps, I heard screaming. I crept along the wall to find a window that might get me a view inside, thanking somebody’s lucky stars right then that it _wasn’t_ my knife I’d forgotten, after all. 

Willadeene’s back was to the window, and she was pointing a double-barrel across the room, straight at Isla-Mae’s chest. I still don’t think there’s any higher power to credit for the fact she didn’t shoot in the time it took me to bust the door down and get between them. I think, at the time, she was delighted to have a witness.

She was out of breath, but she _smiled_ at me with this… grotesque sort of _challenge_ in her eyes. Isla-Mae just collapsed against my back to cry into my sleeve. I told her, I said, _‘Isla-Mae, we’re leaving. Go get the baby and your things,’_ but she was sobbing too hard to say anything but Willadeene’s name before she could finish tellin’ me what she’d done, or where Jackson was.

I didn’t have to _try_ to understand that: Willadeene’s sleeves were soaking wet up past the elbows. It must have shown on my face that I wanted to tear her limb from limb, because that’s when she cocked the gun.

She asked me why I was there, and calm as I could, I said I wasn’t leaving without my cell phone, and the girl. Willadeene straightened her back, that challenge washin’ over her face again as she suggested that Isla-Mae go and find it. Under the condition that the phone be all she takes, and she not set foot back in the kitchen.

I needed to pry Isla-Mae’s hands out of my sleeve and tell her to go. Willadeene’s joyful face as she shambled off is what taught me that monsters don’t just lurk in the nighttime. They’ll send you off with tea cakes and say grace at the table. They’ll offer to rock your baby before they drown him.

With Isla-Mae gone, Willadeene turned to me and said she knew exactly why I wanted my phone back. That she’ll let me have it, only so I know: if I ever show my face ‘round here again, she’ll take that place away from me. She asked me, _‘Who do you think they’ll trust more? A fledgeling hunter, or a civilian safehouse keeper?’_ And I thought I knew the answer.

We had to leave without anything of Isla-Mae’s; clothes, money, son. I can’t even begin to describe the state she was in. I still see it in my sleep.

It didn’t take long for her to turn cold, though. She snapped the cross off her neck and dropped it out the cab window like a cigarette on our way to a motel. Thought she’d stay numb like that forever until she crawled into my bed halfway through the night to cry some more.

I opened _Scope_ when she fell asleep and scrolled through the backlog. Just like I remembered, there was talk from a week or so prior about another safehouse runner nearby goin’ missing. What I wondered was whether the mods would take it seriously if I just _told_ them that I knew who was responsible. I didn’t think complaining that this woman was hurtin’ civilians was gonna get me very far in a place that facilitated killing like clockwork. Thought they might care more if they knew someone was trying to create a funnel to her house by pickin’ off other members. I’d need evidence for that, without risking another run in with her shotgun.

Isla-Mae decided by herself she’d be stickin’ with me from now on, and I didn’t even think about tellin’ her no. She had nowhere to go. I had nowhere to be.

She wanted to go back right away and kill Willadeene herself, and I couldn’t tell if it was more for her or for me that I couldn’t let her. I just promised it’d get taken care of, one way or another.

So, we started watching her. Got a rental car, popped off the plates. I was prepared to stake out as long as I had to, but Isla-Mae was restless. The only thing that kept her calm was the idea of seeing that woman die. It didn’t scare me at all. Makin’ her wait just felt like I was the one takin’ the only thing she had left.

On Sunday, we followed Willadeene to church. The day before, we went thrifting for a dress that Isla-Mae could wear without stickin’ out like a sore thumb, a scarf to cover her red hair. We snuck in just fine, and sat somewhere that we could see Willadeene. Isla-Mae nearly tore the hem of her dress with how hard she was gripping it in her fists, watching that woman hug and kiss all these locals who must have thought of her as a close friend. I didn’t have the heart to reach for her hand. It wasn’t my place yet, so I just held onto my knife between us.

Someone sat down next to Willadeene. This person wasn’t dressed for church; bomber jacket, ripped jeans, unruly hair just a few shades darker than hers. What stuck out about them most was the big, dark sunglasses, and the fact that she was taken off guard by their presence.

I could feel it from across the room. Something creeping like always, but up my neck this time, like a drop of water climbing backwards. I became sharply aware of every statue that could see us from high above. Isla-Mae’s nails dug into my hand. She hissed at me not to block her view when I tried, fixated on Willadeene recoiling as the person pulled up their shades to look her in the eye. I was focused on their face.

From my distance away, it looked at first like they didn’t _have_ eyes — like they’d been cored out into hollow, black spaces — but they were only the deepest bruises I’d ever seen. This brutal, hungry _purple_ branching into thready capillaries climbin’ down onto their cheeks, temples, brow. They didn’t look hurt, though. Only serene, in a way I’d never seen on anything that looked like a person.

Every nerve in my body told me to look away, and I couldn’t. I had to know what this monster was gonna do to the one I’d been chasin’.

I couldn’t hear it when they spoke, but whatever they said must have been damn scary to paralyze Willadeene like that. They lowered their shades back down. I didn’t need to see their head turn to know they were lookin’ directly at me as they stood up from the pew.

From there, it happened fast. Faster than I’d have let it, if it were up to the part of me that’d never been driven by anger before.

Willadeene started checkin’ over her shoulders, but she never seemed to spot us. She kept making eye contact with Jesus up on his cross, like she thought he was just gonna come down and beat her with it. I could swear I caught him glancing at me, too, but it was just an echo, like… when the camera flash stays in your eyes a while after the picture’s taken. I wasn’t the target.

Halfway through the service, Willadeene stumbled out of her seat to leave, ducking her head away from all her friends and neighbors. We stood up to follow her, Isla-Mae’s hand twisted tight into my sleeve. Her despair had turned so quick into just wantin’ to use the knife I’d bought her ‘fore someone stole her target.

Willadeene made it to her car, but not much further. Isla-Mae thought she’d noticed us tailin’ her and couldn’t stand it, told me to step on it, to chase her ‘til the street was empty and ram her off the road, but I said no. No, she doesn’t even know we’re after her. Not when everybody is, all of a sudden. 

She didn’t understand the way I did yet, and I didn’t have the time to explain it all to her before Willadeene swerved and wrapped herself around a telephone pole. I screeched to a halt and we sat there in the road while people gathered on the fringes, afraid to get too close to the power lines jumping up and down on the roof of her car. When I turned my head, the first thing my eyes caught on was the only person not lookin’ at the crash itself, staring right through my window from the curb. They smiled at me and lifted up a hand to shake their phone as if to say _‘check yours.’_ They didn’t disappear like some mirage after that, neither, just… turned and walked away, like they were sure I wouldn’t follow.

Now, _Scope_ is run by three mods that go by initials V, T, and S. They don’t hide their inclinations. V’s a hunter the way you think of ‘em, and T does all the talking — _networking,_ more, if you get what I’m sayin’. S hardly ever spoke at all, but they _never_ went offline. I’d even thought before that they must have some pretty nasty dark circles, if they ain’t never slept. _[heh]_ I never thought I’d meet any of them in person, much less witness the way they keep their platform clean.

My PM with Willadeene was gone, history wiped with her handle from the entire system. I scrolled up to find the claim she’d sent out to my ask for help in the main chat, and it was like she’d never sent it. The only new message was from T sayin’ there’ve been some removals, with a reminder that civilians are protected members, not easy prey. I wasn’t about to be the only soul askin’ questions.

So I drove us back to Willadeene’s house for Isla-Mae’s things. They were still there, like I’d expected. Made sense she’d not throw it all away, so there was still that feeling of… _coveting_ something that somebody else needed, giving it away to other people who need and pretending to be the good Samaritan until she took it back from them next. Made sense to me, then, why there were spare clothes in the closet of my room, too.

**GERTRUDE**

What had she done with the baby?

**FARADAY**

He was gone when we got there. _[Deep sigh]_ Last thing she took from Isla-Mae was any chance of closure.

**GERTRUDE**

The Desolation _does_ like to have the last word. 

…How do you think they did it? The moderator, “Mod S.”

**FARADAY**

Honestly? Think they just cut her brake lines. _[Scoffs]_ Work smarter, not harder.

**GERTRUDE**

Awful lot of theatrics, then. Do you think that was to make her last moments especially painful, or do you think it was more for you?

**FARADAY**

Little of both, always figured. I ain’t heard much from ‘em since, but I’ve definitely felt sort of… monitored.

**GERTRUDE**

And that doesn’t dissuade you from using the application?

**FARADAY**

Nah, it’s… almost more like they _like_ me. Can’t say why, but I don’t even have any hard feelings about the thing I keep seein’ in the rearview mirror, either. Isla-Mae drives if I get twitchy.

**GERTRUDE**

I see. Well, thank you, Atticus, for the cautionary tale.

Hm. I would have hoped those two would be back by now.

**FARADAY**

You and me both. Hell you think’s takin’ so long?

**GERTRUDE**

Well, unless Gerard went and introduced our drinks to the pavement, I could hardly begin to guess.

**FARADAY**

Yeah. _[Hesitation]_ …He don’t look so good, you know.

**GERTRUDE**

I’m quite sure he’ll survive.

[CLICK]

**Author's Note:**

> **CW: child death, drowning, implied abuse, car crash**
> 
> _all_ my homies hate gertrude. but i hope you like my country boy malewife! he's going to be _very_ important to the plot of pharos by right, and i cannot express enough how Not Ready anyone is for that. i'm also not ready.
> 
> i've been on a hiatus with PBR due to some serious health reasons, but at least i got this done! and i'm so happy to be able to post it finally. i WILL get back to writing PBR, i'm going to be balancing it with my [bi jon event](https://jonsimsbipride.tumblr.com/post/637715034898923520/) contribution (wink nudge please go check that out also) but i _desperately_ want to get back on the horse and i think posting this statement helps.
> 
> and once again, PLEASE go download the [avatar of fear zine](https://avataroffearzine.tumblr.com/post/639155338580525056/)! i was so blessed to be a part of the mod team for it, and it turned out so gorgeous, everyone's art and statements just knocked the wind right out of me.


End file.
